MJ calls what happened to her in Zion national park “small ‘T’ trauma”. She knows women have experienced worse from their partners. But she still feels the anger of being left behind on a hike by her now ex. “It brings up stuff in my body that maybe I have not cleared out yet,” she said.
Five years ago, MJ and a new partner – he was not exactly her boyfriend, and the pair were not exclusive – traveled from Los Angeles to Utah for an adventure getaway. MJ, who is 38 and works in PR, was looking forward to exploring Zion’s striking scenery; its vast sandstone canyon and pristine wading trails were on the list. But on the morning of their big hike, MJ was not feeling well. She could not shake the feeling that something was “off”; indeed, MJ would learn on this trip that her partner was seeing other women.
As they made their way up Angel’s Landing, MJ’s partner started walking faster than her. “I could tell it was getting on his nerves that I was slow,” she said. “I was like, ‘Fuck it, just go ahead of me.’” He did without hesitation.
When she caught up at the top of the mountain, they took a picture together. Then her partner hiked down the mountain with a woman he had met on the way up, leaving MJ to finish by herself. They broke up shortly after that trip. (MJ asked to be referred to by her initials for the sake of speaking openly about a past relationship.)
Last month, MJ opened TikTok and heard the phrase “alpine divorce”, a label she now attaches to her experience in Zion.
It seems like the man and the women in this story both had different expectations for what kind of partnership they had.
If I was hiking with a buddy where we were on equal footing and both self-sufficient, and we were pissing each other off, then I wouldn’t feel like I had any special responsibility to them over any of the normal shared responsibilities that all hikers have to each other. We would owe each other common courtesy, but wouldn’t need to babysit each other on the trail.
If I felt like I was responsible for the other person, because they weren’t self-sufficient, then of course I wouldn’t leave them behind.
If I felt like I was in a relationship with the other person, and we were pissed off with each other, then maybe I would hike ahead for a few minutes to give each other some time to cool off. But I wouldn’t leave them to hike the hike on their own, if I knew they wanted to hike it together. I would care about my partner in a different way and want to prioritize the relationship vs. a buddy I was friends with.
Although I guess it would depend on the friendship I had too. There are some friends who I would feel comfortable hiking separately to the summit if we pissed each other off. And there’s other friends who I think I would not do that with.
I could even imagine being partners with someone who would prefer to hike separately to reach the summit and then try to make up there.
I’m sure that things vary from place to place, but wherever I’ve been in nature, strangers are very quick to check on you and help you out if you seem to be struggling. Whether it’s hiking, mountain biking, skiing, or anything else, we all know that it could be us someday.
I think this comment section is so contentious because there is a whole range of behaviors and experiences that this story brings up in people. And we’re all trying to speak in generalities about situations that are very nuanced when they happen in the real world.